Is there a morally relevant difference between hunting and dogfighting, such that only the latter is wrong? If there is no morally relevant difference between these activities, then either both are right or both are wrong. Hunting is morally acceptable. Dogfighting is morally unacceptable. There is no morally relevant difference between hunting and dogfighting. MORE

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. ARGUMENTS FOR MORAL VEGETARIANISM A variety of arguments have been given for vegetarianism. Sometimes they take such a sketchy form that it is not completely clear they are moral arguments. I outline two arguments of this sort in what follows in order to illustrate some of the difficulties in evaluating moral vegetarianism. Tags: Moral Vegetarianism MORE

But when a moral being is feeling a pleasure or pain that is deserved or undeserved, or a pleasure or pain that implies a good or a bad disposition, the total fact is quite inadequately described if we say 'a sentient being is feeling pleasure, or pain'. MORE

We want to take a building that has been a flashpoint for conflict on one moral issue and turn it into a place of dialogue on another one," said Bruce Friedrich, vice president for policy at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. PETA wants to buy the clinic owned by slain Dr. Tiller. "We MORE

To see an issue of such moral debate minimized to simply economic activity is just not right. It's really frustrating. Our country needs federal stimulus money and I was a big supporter of this initiative of President Obama's. But it disappoints and frustrates me to see it consistently used for purposes that I passionately oppose. MORE

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. For example, if one could pick up shed animal legs in a pasture in which animals roam freely among their own kind, there might be no moral objection to eating the legs. If, on the other hand, the legs are produced in factory conditions, there is a moral objection. They suggest that any simple moral vegetarianism is impossible. Tags: Moral Vegetarianism MORE

Forty years ago, the suggestion that nonhuman animals have moral rights—indeed, many of the same rights as human beings—would have been met with incredulous stares, if not outright ridicule. If you are among the growing number of Americans who think that animals deserve the same moral rights as people, you can help promote their rights by refusing to purchase products from industries that harm and exploit animals MORE

A nice moral bond of union, truly, between colonies and motherland! We come back, then, to the point that though it is not absolutely true that "Man is what he eats," there is, nevertheless, a large element of truth in the saying, and the Vegetarian has just ground for suspecting that beefy meals are not infrequently the precursors of beefy morals. MORE

He seems to think that the demand for free-range pork is a demand for wild pork, when in fact it's a demand for morally acceptable conditions for the pigs. Here is a New York Times op-ed column about free-range pigs. The author is confused. In other words, people want to eat not wild pigs but domestic pigs raised in humane conditions MORE

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. Most moral vegetarians list fish and fowl as animals one should not eat. The ability to feel pain is not an obviously plausible way of morally distinguishing microorganisms from other organisms. What is the moral difference between killing a microorganism in the digesting of other food and killing a hog, e.g., in order to eat and digest it. Tags: Moral Vegetarianism MORE

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. It can be argued instead that by eating meat one is giving one’s tacit consent or approval to the present situation, that the only way to be true to one’s moral conviction that the present treatment of animals is inhumane is not to eat meat. The question arises: Why should such indirect causal influence have any moral import? Tags: Moral Vegetarianism MORE

If only we can overcome cruelty, to human and animal, with love and compassion we shall stand at the threshold of a new era in human moral and spiritual evolution - and realize, at last, our most unique quality: humanity. Jane Goodall. MORE

I assumed that Hume was right in thinking that ultimately morality depends on how we feel about things. Smart , "Utilitarianism and Generalized Benevolence," Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 61 [January-April 1980]: 115-21, at 115 [italics in original; endnote omitted]) Note from KBJ: Smart is mistaken if he thinks that only utilitarianism accords moral status to animals. MORE

One restriction on the absolutism of man's rule over Nature is now generally accepted: moral philosophers and public opinion agree that it is morally impermissible to be cruel to animals. And by this they mean not only that it is wrong to enjoy torturing animals—which few moralists would ever have wished explicitly to deny, however little emphasis they might have placed on cruelty to animals in their moral teaching—but that it is wrong to cause them to suffer unnecessarily. MORE

Gene Bauer from Farm Sanctuary appears in this article. Pretty intense, but I hope people read it. There is a disturbing hedonism to eating. I went to a restaurant for a work lunch and everyone ate meat but me, even the animal lovers. We just don't think about where that flesh came from.and most of us don't care. meat farm animal welfare factory farm farm sanctuary MORE

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. SOME PROBLEMS OF MORAL VEGETARIANISM With respect to traditional moral vegetarianism some problems immediately come to the fore. What animals is it morally wrong to eat? If animals could be created by genetic engineering, could they be created so that there were no moral objections to eating them? But what is the extent of the universal moral principle? MORE

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. CONCLUSION There is no doubt that moral vegetarianism will continue to be a position that attracts people concerned with the plight of animals and with humanitarian goals. Although I have found no compelling moral arguments for vegetarianism, there still may be reasons why morally sensitive people would wish to become vegetarians. Tags: Moral Vegetarianism MORE

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. People who do not eat meat for moral reasons tend to be less brutal than people who do eat meat. People who eat meat after reflection on the morality of eating meat are less brutal than people who eat meat without such reflection. The bulk of the population has given no reflection at all to the morality of eating meat. Tags: Moral Vegetarianism MORE

Philosophers have shown that the standard reasons offered to exclude animals from the moral circle, and to justify not assessing our treatment of them by the same moral categories and machinery we use for assessing the treatment of humans, do not meet the test of moral relevance. Rollin , "The Moral Status of Animals and Their Use as Experimental Subjects," chap. MORE

A third of a century ago, when the modern animal-liberation movement was in its infancy, Martin published an essay entitled “A Critique of Moral Vegetarianism,” Reason Papers (fall 1976): 13-43. This was two years after Robert Nozick discussed the moral status of nonhuman animals in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974) and one year after Peter Singer published Animal Liberation (New York: Avon Books, 1975). Another reason is moral. MORE

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. The Argument from Speciesism If there is some doubt whether the arguments from monkeys and from glass walls should be considered moral arguments, there can be no doubt about the moral import of the argument from speciesism. Just as racism and sexism are to be morally condemned, so is speciesism. KBJ: Martin is right that this is a moral argument. MORE

Disappointing results from Gallup's annual "moral acceptability" measure. The article also shows results on non-animal issues as well. Not surprisingly, Republicans tend to take more conservative stances than Democrats. MORE

There is a difficulty about drawing from all this a moral for ourselves. But then we can say this because we can say that all those are bad moralities, whereas we cannot look at our own moralities and declare them bad. This is not arrogance: it is obviously incoherent for someone to declare the system of moral principles that he accepts to be bad, just as one cannot coherently say of anything that one believes it but it is false. MORE

Now when we ask what is the general nature of morally good actions, it seems quite clear that it is in virtue of the motives that they proceed from that actions are morally good. The drawing of a rigid distinction between the right and the morally good frees us from such confusion. (W. MORE

Let us think of the more moral members of society as a moral elite, much as the generality of scientists form a scientific elite. I hope I do not need to stress that such a moral elite must not be confused with a social or intellectual elite. MORE

The concept of moral rights differs in important ways from that of legal rights. First, moral rights, if there are any, are universal. An individual's race, sex, religion, place of birth, or country of domicile are not relevant characteristics for the possession of moral rights. MORE

That Kant should hold such a view should not be surprising; it is a direct consequence of his moral theory, the main outlines of which may be briefly, albeit crudely, summarized. As such, no moral agent is ever to be treated merely as a means. MORE

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. One might assume—although again this assumption may not be jusitified [sic]—that Mr. Morse was using this consideration as a moral argument for vegetarianism. But what exactly does the argument construed as a moral argument amount to? Even granted the premises, the moral conclusion does not follow from the factual premises. Tags: Moral Vegetarianism MORE

Self-consciousness is morally significant; species, like race or sex, is not Preference utilitarians count the killing of a being with a preference for continued life as worse than the killing of a being without any such preference. Self-conscious beings therefore are not mere receptacles for containing a certain quantity of pleasure, and are not replaceable. To take the view that non-self-conscious beings are replaceable is not to say that their interests do not count. MORE

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. The Argument from Human Grain Shortage All of the clearly moral arguments for vegetarianism given so far have been in terms of animal rights and suffering. New moral vegetarianism, however, rests on moral arguments couched in terms of human welfare. This argument also differs from traditional ones in its selective and restrictive moral prohibitions against eating flesh. MORE

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. Consequently, the killing of some animals for food, if done painlessly, is not morally objectionable. But far from supporting moral vegetarianism, these alternative analyses seem to make moral vegetarianism even more difficult to support in terms of animal rights. According to Benn, only moral agents have rights. Only moral agents have autonomy rights. MORE

Again, all or most men in whom the moral consciousness is strongly developed find themselves from time to time in conflict with the commonly received morality of the society to which they belong: and thus—as was before said—have a crucial experience proving that duty does not mean to them what other men will disapprove of them for not doing. MORE

If an animal has the relevant moral capacities, actually or potentially, then it can be a possessor of rights. It may for this reason be morally appropriate for us meanwhile to act towards the former animals as if they are possessors of rights. (H. MORE

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. The implication is certainly that it would be inconsistent for us to think that it is morally permissible for us to eat nonhuman animals but wrong for superior aliens to eat us. But it is not clear that it is inconsistent if there is a relevant moral difference between animals and humans not found between humans and superior aliens. Tags: Moral Vegetarianism MORE

It would remain true, of course, that the vegetarian diet is more limited, since every pleasure available to the vegetarian is also available to the carnivore (not counting the moral satisfactions involved, of course—which would be question-begging), plus more which are not available to the vegetarian so long as he remains one. MORE

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Philosophers have shown that the standard reasons offered to exclude animals from the moral circle, and to justify not assessing our treatment of them by the same moral categories and machinery we use for assessing the treatment of humans, do not meet the test of moral relevance. Rollin , "The Moral Status of Animals and Their Use as Experimental Subjects," chap.

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. Most moral vegetarians list fish and fowl as animals one should not eat. The ability to feel pain is not an obviously plausible way of morally distinguishing microorganisms from other organisms. What is the moral difference between killing a microorganism in the digesting of other food and killing a hog, e.g., in order to eat and digest it. Tags: Moral Vegetarianism

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For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. CONCLUSION There is no doubt that moral vegetarianism will continue to be a position that attracts people concerned with the plight of animals and with humanitarian goals. Although I have found no compelling moral arguments for vegetarianism, there still may be reasons why morally sensitive people would wish to become vegetarians. Tags: Moral Vegetarianism

A third of a century ago, when the modern animal-liberation movement was in its infancy, Martin published an essay entitled “A Critique of Moral Vegetarianism,” Reason Papers (fall 1976): 13-43. This was two years after Robert Nozick discussed the moral status of nonhuman animals in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974) and one year after Peter Singer published Animal Liberation (New York: Avon Books, 1975). Another reason is moral.

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. People who do not eat meat for moral reasons tend to be less brutal than people who do eat meat. People who eat meat after reflection on the morality of eating meat are less brutal than people who eat meat without such reflection. The bulk of the population has given no reflection at all to the morality of eating meat. Tags: Moral Vegetarianism

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. The implication is certainly that it would be inconsistent for us to think that it is morally permissible for us to eat nonhuman animals but wrong for superior aliens to eat us. But it is not clear that it is inconsistent if there is a relevant moral difference between animals and humans not found between humans and superior aliens. Tags: Moral Vegetarianism

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. The Argument from Speciesism If there is some doubt whether the arguments from monkeys and from glass walls should be considered moral arguments, there can be no doubt about the moral import of the argument from speciesism. Just as racism and sexism are to be morally condemned, so is speciesism. KBJ: Martin is right that this is a moral argument.

Gene Bauer from Farm Sanctuary appears in this article. Pretty intense, but I hope people read it. There is a disturbing hedonism to eating. I went to a restaurant for a work lunch and everyone ate meat but me, even the animal lovers. We just don't think about where that flesh came from.and most of us don't care. meat farm animal welfare factory farm farm sanctuary

He seems to think that the demand for free-range pork is a demand for wild pork, when in fact it's a demand for morally acceptable conditions for the pigs. Here is a New York Times op-ed column about free-range pigs. The author is confused. In other words, people want to eat not wild pigs but domestic pigs raised in humane conditions

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. One might assume—although again this assumption may not be jusitified [sic]—that Mr. Morse was using this consideration as a moral argument for vegetarianism. But what exactly does the argument construed as a moral argument amount to? Even granted the premises, the moral conclusion does not follow from the factual premises. Tags: Moral Vegetarianism

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. SOME PROBLEMS OF MORAL VEGETARIANISM With respect to traditional moral vegetarianism some problems immediately come to the fore. What animals is it morally wrong to eat? If animals could be created by genetic engineering, could they be created so that there were no moral objections to eating them? But what is the extent of the universal moral principle?

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. ARGUMENTS FOR MORAL VEGETARIANISM A variety of arguments have been given for vegetarianism. Sometimes they take such a sketchy form that it is not completely clear they are moral arguments. I outline two arguments of this sort in what follows in order to illustrate some of the difficulties in evaluating moral vegetarianism. Tags: Moral Vegetarianism

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. Consequently, the killing of some animals for food, if done painlessly, is not morally objectionable. But far from supporting moral vegetarianism, these alternative analyses seem to make moral vegetarianism even more difficult to support in terms of animal rights. According to Benn, only moral agents have rights. Only moral agents have autonomy rights.

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. For example, if one could pick up shed animal legs in a pasture in which animals roam freely among their own kind, there might be no moral objection to eating the legs. If, on the other hand, the legs are produced in factory conditions, there is a moral objection. They suggest that any simple moral vegetarianism is impossible. Tags: Moral Vegetarianism

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. The implication is certainly that it would be inconsistent for us to think that it is morally permissible for us to eat nonhuman animals but wrong for superior aliens to eat us. But it is not clear that it is inconsistent if there is a relevant moral difference between animals and humans not found between humans and superior aliens. Tags: Moral Vegetarianism

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. The Argument from Speciesism If there is some doubt whether the arguments from monkeys and from glass walls should be considered moral arguments, there can be no doubt about the moral import of the argument from speciesism. Just as racism and sexism are to be morally condemned, so is speciesism. KBJ: Martin is right that this is a moral argument.

Gene Bauer from Farm Sanctuary appears in this article. Pretty intense, but I hope people read it. There is a disturbing hedonism to eating. I went to a restaurant for a work lunch and everyone ate meat but me, even the animal lovers. We just don't think about where that flesh came from.and most of us don't care. meat farm animal welfare factory farm farm sanctuary

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. The Argument from Human Grain Shortage All of the clearly moral arguments for vegetarianism given so far have been in terms of animal rights and suffering. New moral vegetarianism, however, rests on moral arguments couched in terms of human welfare. This argument also differs from traditional ones in its selective and restrictive moral prohibitions against eating flesh.

For an explanation of this feature, click on “Moral Vegetarianism” at the bottom of this post. It can be argued instead that by eating meat one is giving one’s tacit consent or approval to the present situation, that the only way to be true to one’s moral conviction that the present treatment of animals is inhumane is not to eat meat. The question arises: Why should such indirect causal influence have any moral import? Tags: Moral Vegetarianism

Let us think of the more moral members of society as a moral elite, much as the generality of scientists form a scientific elite. I hope I do not need to stress that such a moral elite must not be confused with a social or intellectual elite.

There is a difficulty about drawing from all this a moral for ourselves. But then we can say this because we can say that all those are bad moralities, whereas we cannot look at our own moralities and declare them bad. This is not arrogance: it is obviously incoherent for someone to declare the system of moral principles that he accepts to be bad, just as one cannot coherently say of anything that one believes it but it is false.

It would remain true, of course, that the vegetarian diet is more limited, since every pleasure available to the vegetarian is also available to the carnivore (not counting the moral satisfactions involved, of course—which would be question-begging), plus more which are not available to the vegetarian so long as he remains one.

Again, all or most men in whom the moral consciousness is strongly developed find themselves from time to time in conflict with the commonly received morality of the society to which they belong: and thus—as was before said—have a crucial experience proving that duty does not mean to them what other men will disapprove of them for not doing.

A nice moral bond of union, truly, between colonies and motherland! We come back, then, to the point that though it is not absolutely true that "Man is what he eats," there is, nevertheless, a large element of truth in the saying, and the Vegetarian has just ground for suspecting that beefy meals are not infrequently the precursors of beefy morals.

But when a moral being is feeling a pleasure or pain that is deserved or undeserved, or a pleasure or pain that implies a good or a bad disposition, the total fact is quite inadequately described if we say 'a sentient being is feeling pleasure, or pain'.

I assumed that Hume was right in thinking that ultimately morality depends on how we feel about things. Smart , "Utilitarianism and Generalized Benevolence," Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 61 [January-April 1980]: 115-21, at 115 [italics in original; endnote omitted]) Note from KBJ: Smart is mistaken if he thinks that only utilitarianism accords moral status to animals.

One restriction on the absolutism of man's rule over Nature is now generally accepted: moral philosophers and public opinion agree that it is morally impermissible to be cruel to animals. And by this they mean not only that it is wrong to enjoy torturing animals—which few moralists would ever have wished explicitly to deny, however little emphasis they might have placed on cruelty to animals in their moral teaching—but that it is wrong to cause them to suffer unnecessarily.

Self-consciousness is morally significant; species, like race or sex, is not Preference utilitarians count the killing of a being with a preference for continued life as worse than the killing of a being without any such preference. Self-conscious beings therefore are not mere receptacles for containing a certain quantity of pleasure, and are not replaceable. To take the view that non-self-conscious beings are replaceable is not to say that their interests do not count.

If an animal has the relevant moral capacities, actually or potentially, then it can be a possessor of rights. It may for this reason be morally appropriate for us meanwhile to act towards the former animals as if they are possessors of rights. (H.

Disappointing results from Gallup's annual "moral acceptability" measure. The article also shows results on non-animal issues as well. Not surprisingly, Republicans tend to take more conservative stances than Democrats.

Now when we ask what is the general nature of morally good actions, it seems quite clear that it is in virtue of the motives that they proceed from that actions are morally good. The drawing of a rigid distinction between the right and the morally good frees us from such confusion. (W.

That Kant should hold such a view should not be surprising; it is a direct consequence of his moral theory, the main outlines of which may be briefly, albeit crudely, summarized. As such, no moral agent is ever to be treated merely as a means.

Forty years ago, the suggestion that nonhuman animals have moral rights—indeed, many of the same rights as human beings—would have been met with incredulous stares, if not outright ridicule. If you are among the growing number of Americans who think that animals deserve the same moral rights as people, you can help promote their rights by refusing to purchase products from industries that harm and exploit animals

We want to take a building that has been a flashpoint for conflict on one moral issue and turn it into a place of dialogue on another one," said Bruce Friedrich, vice president for policy at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. PETA wants to buy the clinic owned by slain Dr. Tiller. "We

If only we can overcome cruelty, to human and animal, with love and compassion we shall stand at the threshold of a new era in human moral and spiritual evolution - and realize, at last, our most unique quality: humanity. Jane Goodall.

Is there a morally relevant difference between hunting and dogfighting, such that only the latter is wrong? If there is no morally relevant difference between these activities, then either both are right or both are wrong. Hunting is morally acceptable. Dogfighting is morally unacceptable. There is no morally relevant difference between hunting and dogfighting.

To see an issue of such moral debate minimized to simply economic activity is just not right. It's really frustrating. Our country needs federal stimulus money and I was a big supporter of this initiative of President Obama's. But it disappoints and frustrates me to see it consistently used for purposes that I passionately oppose.

The concept of moral rights differs in important ways from that of legal rights. First, moral rights, if there are any, are universal. An individual's race, sex, religion, place of birth, or country of domicile are not relevant characteristics for the possession of moral rights.

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For European Union Residents: By providing your consent below, you are expressly agreeing that we may email you under European Union General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679). For more information on this regulation, you may visit the European Union's site. Additional details.